How to Harvest and Use Rose Hips

1. Harvest the Hips

   The best time to harvest your rose hips is after the first light frost has nipped the leaves, but before you experience a hard frost that freezes the hips. Light frost helps sweeten the flavor. The hips should still be firm and have good color. Typically, rose hips are red or orange at maturity. Leave the shriveled or dried rose hips on the plants for the birds to enjoy; they won't be as tasty and may be too mushy to pick. Waiting until after a frost is also good for the plant, since cutting the hips before frost could encourage the rose to send out new growth that will be killed back at the next frost.

   Fully ripe hips can often simply be plucked off the rose canes. Or you can clip them off with a knife or scissors. Wear garden gloves to avoid being pricked by the thorns on the rose canes.

2. Clean the Hips

   Trim off the stem and blossom ends from the hip. Hold the hip securely and slice it in half. You can do all of this trimming with a pair of scissors if the hips are too small to use a knife.

3. Remove the Seeds

   You can use whole, fresh rose hips, but the seeds inside have an irritating, hairy covering so it is best if you remove the seeds prior to eating. Cut the hips in half and manually scoop out the seeds. If you're making jelly, you don't need to remove the seeds.

4. Rinse and Process the Hips

   Thoroughly rinse off the rose hips by running water over them in a colander. The hips can be used immediately or dried or frozen to be stored for future use.

   Tip

   For the most healthful impact, use rose hips when they are fresh. Drying rose hips causes them to lose most of their vitamin C.

Uses for Rose Hips

There are many common ways to use and preserve rose hips:

• Rose hips can be cooked to extract the juice for jams and jellies. The juice can be strained and used immediately, or frozen for up to a year.
• To dry rose hips, spread the hips out over baking trays rays and dry them in an oven or dehydrator set to 110 F until the hips are dry and brittle. When completely dry, store them in airtight jars.

When making jelly, rose hips are often mixed with other fruits, such as apples or cranberries. To extract the juice to make jelly, remove the blossom remnants and stems from the rose hips. Wash the hips in cool water. Add the rose hips to a pan, cover with water, and simmer for 15 minutes. Cool, then strain through a cheesecloth into a container. One pound of rose hips equals about 2 cups of juice.

You can also use fresh or dried rose hips for a simple rosehip tea. You will need about twice as many rose hips if you are using fresh ones. For fresh rosehip tea, steep four to eight rose hips in a cup of boiling water for about 10 to 15 minutes. Don't use aluminum pans or utensils that could discolor the hips; aluminum also destroys the vitamin C in rose hips. Stainless steel is fine. If you want to try out the flavor of rose hips but don't have any in your garden or you aren't up to all the seeding and prep work that is involved, rosehip tea is widely available in many grocery stores.